Singer and composer Amanda Palmer, who was born in New York City but grew up in Massachusetts, sparked the ire of many around the Internet after a poem about alleged Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was posted on her website. A representative for Palmer, the vocalist for the rock band The Dresden Dolls, didn’t return a request for comment. The verse, titled “A Poem for Dzhokhar,” was accompanied with a warning reading “hateful commenters trying to hack the blog by mimicking regular benevloent [Sic] users’ names. please proceed with caution and respect.” “This was pure drivel,” one comment below the poem reads. “The poem’s lines are clueless, smug, and patronizing. It’s enough to make us miss ‘Accidental Racist’,” Spin magazine wrote. Gawker declared it was “the worst poem ever composed in the English language.” Certainly art can help readers through tragedy, but does this work add anything? Here’s a sampling from the poem:

you don’t know how it felt to be in the womb but it must have been at least a little warmer than this.

you don’t know how intimately they’re recording your every move on closed-circuit cameras until you see your face reflected back at you through through the pulp.

you don’t know how to stop picking at your fingers.

you don’t know how little you’ve been paying attention until you look down at your legs again.

you don’t know how many times you can say you’re coming until they just stop believing you.